2025-10-18 –, Ada Byron
In this talk I will present my journey in developing a decentralized and secure communication platform for a university with thousands students and faculty members. Using Matrix and Element as foundation I tailored the solution to meet academic needs, ensure data privacy and integrate with some systems, bots, widgets etc.
The session will cover:
- Why Matrix was chosen over other platforms.
- Technical stack and deployment model.
- Customization of Element and federation decisions.
- Challenges (including authentication, onboarding, moderation and compliance).
- Real-world impact and feedback.
- Future plans including bridging, widgets and improvements.
This case study shows how Matrix can empower large academic communities and help other institutions explore privacy-respecting and scalable alternatives to traditional messaging platforms.
By the way, it is real story. :)
Universities face growing challenges in balancing seamless communication, data privacy and platform sovereignty. This talk presents the story of how I built a Matrix-powered communication platform based on Element for a university community with thousands students, faculty and staff.
I will share my hands-on experience deploying a self-hosted Matrix homeserver, using the Element client for academic use and integrating the system with some infrastructure.
You'll learn about:
- The decision-making process: Why Matrix and Element?
- Technical architecture and deployment at scale.
- Real-world challenges in onboarding, federation, moderation and support.
- Custom feature additions and user adoption results.
- Lessons learned and recommendations for other institutions or organizations considering Matrix.
This session is ideal for technologists, sysadmins, public sector decision-makers and open-source advocates exploring decentralized alternatives to Slack, Teams or WhatsApp in education or large organizations.
So yep, feel free to ask!
Individual Entrepreneur Vladislav Kalinin has been living his dream in love with computer science for the last 15 years dedicating that time to building IT solutions across many layers of the bits and bytes world.
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